Scientists have taken the idea of a film short down to new levels. Molecular levels.
IBM says it has made the tiniest stop-motion movie ever — a one-minute video of individual carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline.
Each frame measures 45 by 25 nanometers, but is hugely magnified. The movie (http://bit.ly/17ZmHIt) is reminiscent of early video games, particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame accompanied by simple music and sound effects.
Photo: AFP
The movie is titled A Boy and His Atom.
Videos showing atoms in motion have been seen before, but Andreas Heinrich, IBM’s principal scientist for the project, said on Tuesday this is the first time anything so small has been maneuvered to tell a story.
“This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world,” Heinrich said.
“The reason we made this was not to convey a scientific message directly, but to engage with students, to prompt them to ask questions,” he added.
Jamie Panas of Guinness World Records said Guinness certified the movie as “Smallest Stop-Motion Film.”
IBM used a remotely operated 1.8-tonne scanning tunneling microscope at its lab in San Jose, California, to make the movie earlier this year.
The microscope magnifies the surface more than 100 million times. It operates at minus-268°C.
The cold “makes life simpler for us,” Heinrich said. “The atoms hold still. They would move around on their own at room temperature.”
Scientists used the microscope to control a tiny, super-sharp needle along a copper surface, IBM said.
At a distance of just 1 nanometer, the needle physically attracted the carbon monoxide molecules and pulled them to a precisely specified location on the surface.
The dots that make up the figures in the movie are the oxygen atoms in the molecule, Heinrich said.
The scientists took 242 still images that make up the movie’s 242 frames.
Heinrich said the techniques used to make the movie are similar to what IBM is doing to make data storage smaller.
“As data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level,” he said.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS